Group Who Created Capital Punishment Framework Says It Doesn’t Work

Today the American Law Institute, who wrote the framework for capital punishment the US Supreme Court adopted in Gregg v. Georgia, said that capital punishment in the US is a failure.  Specifically, they stated the US irretrievably fails in “ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.” Minimally adequate?  Ouch.

In the spirit of honesty, I should point out that this doesn’t necessarily mean they think the death penalty is a bad idea; merely that the US sucks at it.  Furthermore, they stopped short of stating a specific position against the death penalty in general.  (Glad that’s off my chest, now I can ignore it without guilt.)

Most people’s position on capital punishment is ideological and not really rooted in any objective premise one way or the other.  For example, many people who are interested in “justice” are really more motivated by revenge.  This became all too apparent in 2000, when then-Governor of Illinois George Ryan put a moratorium on all executions and commuted those on death row to life sentences.  The mantra coming from the anti-moratorium crowd was, “What about the victim’s families?”  Which is a very good slogan.  Ryan’s response was that while he was sympathetic to the families, they don’t own the issue; rather this is a legal issue and should be treated as such.  Which is very good logic.  Besides, if the criminal is brought to what is legally recognized as appropriate justice, the families should be satisfied, correct?  Well, no.  Evidently satisfaction is only given through execution:  it gives closure, and ensures a murderer no longer lives.  While I’m absolutely certain this would be my thought should I ever be unlucky enough to formulate a first-hand opinion on the subject, I also feel this is a position borne in vengeance, and not what is best serving justice.

That being said, I must admit my primary beliefs against the penalty reside somewhere between God’s commandment not to kill (which seems exceptionless) and the seemingly obvious irony in killing people to show that killing people is wrong.  While it’s obvious to me that the reasoning “two wrongs don’t make a right” is preferential to “an eye for an eye”, I also recognize that these are every bit as much ideological arguments as those I retort.

However, I think that the objective evidence does show that capital punishment is not a deterrent.  The death penalty had a four year hiatus in this country, and looking at this hiatus it’s apparent that the death penalty really didn’t have much of an effect, one way or the other.  Further, the “fixed” capital punishment system didn’t have much, if any, improvement over the “broken” one the Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional.  According to data given by the Justice Research and Statistics Association (pg. 38-39), the US murder rate was quite low in 1900, but around 1905 started to dramatically increase, leaving a murder rate well above 9% at the height of the Great Depression; started to decrease to below 5% in the 1950s; then started to hike again during the Vietnam War.  Reaching a peak over 10% in 1980, the murder rate did not begin to significantly decrease again until 1993.  1993 was Clinton’s first year in office, which is only relevant because he was the fourth President following the reinstatement of capital punishment by the Supreme Court in 1976.

The insignificance of the death penalty on murder rates can be seen in the following graph, derived from The Disaster Center data.  I used this graph because the data syncs up better with US Census Data.  That’s my official explanation.  The real reason is because I like making graphs:

Murder Rates Are Ambivalent About the State of Capital Punishment



So I got to thinking, what is the murder rates of the US versus other countries who do or do not have capital punishment?  You can certainly make the argument that, in general, countries without the death penalty have lower murder rates.  In fairness, that does seem too general.  While Europe, which as a continent has almost anonymously eliminated the death penalty, has some of the lowest murder rates in the world, both Mexico and Russia have abolished the death penalty and their murder rates are higher than the US.  China has a relatively low murder rate of 2.36 per 100,000 people (less than half the US level), and executions run rampant (of course, those are official numbers, which in China may not necessarily mean accurate, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt).

So I decided to go the easier route and compare the rates by state (see below).  Fifteen of the US states have abolished the death penalty (Washington D.C. makes sixteen).  According the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, of these states thirteen have murder rates in the best half, and nine of the lowest fifteen murder rates in the country come from this list.  (In fairness, six of lowest ten states have the death penalty, but then the next five are all sans executions.)  In fact, when taking population into account, the murder rate of these states is almost 35% lower than from death penalty states – 3.8% vs. 5.7%.  Even if you include Washington DC, which has no death penalty but a shocking 31.4% murder rate, the total murder rate for all states without capital punishment is 4.0%; still 30% lower than in states with the death penalty.  Even more damning, a study by the FBI showed that the high murder rates in the South, which is almost completely a capital punishment friendly zone, are a major factor in the whole country’s high murder rate.

At best, the list points to complete ambivalence about the whether the death penalty is effective or not.  However, I do believe a little bit of Pascal’s Wager is appropriate here.  The death penalty may or may not be immoral, and it may or may not work.  We should ask ourselves if the bet that it works is worth the payoff, as the sum collected should we lose could very well end up being our souls.

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Murder Rate by State

2008 Figures, United States Federal Bureau of Investigation

States without Capital Punishment in Mauve

State	Popluation	Murders	Murder Rate
North Dakota	641481	3	0.5
New Hampshire	1315809	13	1
Utah	2736424	39	1.4
Idaho	1523816	23	1.5
Hawaii	1288198	25	1.9
Wyoming	532668	10	1.9
Minnesota	5220393	109	2.1
Oregon	3790060	82	2.2
Maine	1316456	31	2.4
Montana	967440	23	2.4
Iowa	3002555	76	2.5
Massachusetts	6497967	167	2.6
Wisconsin	5627967	146	2.6
Vermont	621270	17	2.7
Rhode Island	1050788	29	2.8
Washington	6549224	192	2.9
Colorado	4939456	157	3.2
South Dakota	804194	26	3.2
West Virginia	1814468	60	3.3
Connecticut	3501252	123	3.5
Nebraska	1783432	68	3.8
Kansas	2802134	113	4
Alaska	686293	28	4.1
New Jersey	8682661	376	4.3
New York	19490297	836	4.3
Kentucky	4269245	198	4.6
Ohio	11485910	543	4.7
Virginia	7769089	368	4.7
Indiana	6376792	327	5.1
Michigan	10003422	542	5.4
Pennsylvania	12448279	701	5.6
Texas	24326974	1374	5.6
Arkansas	2855390	162	5.7
California	36756666	2142	5.8
Oklahoma	3642361	212	5.8
Illinois	12901563	790	6.1
Arizona	6500180	407	6.3
Nevada	2600167	163	6.3
Florida	18328340	1168	6.4
Delaware	873092	57	6.5
North Carolina	9222414	604	6.5
Georgia	9685744	636	6.6
Tennessee	6214888	408	6.6
South Carolina	4479800	305	6.8
New Mexico	1984356	142	7.2
Alabama	4661900	353	7.6
Missouri	5911605	455	7.7
Mississippi	2938618	237	8.1
Maryland	5633597	493	8.8
Louisiana	4410796	527	11.9
Washington D.C.	591833	186	31.4